About Me

I love being a career and personal coach, hosting Work with Marty Nemko on KALW-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco, and being a regular contributor to TIME.com and PsychologyToday.com.
My latest book, my 8th is "The Best of Marty Nemko."
Wikipedia has an entry on me with all the gory details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Nemko.
Some of my best recent work appears on this blog but my 3,000 previously published writings and the archive of my radio show are free on www.martynemko.com.
If you would rather email me than post your comments on this blog, my email address is mnemko@comcast.net.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Yes, I know I promised to not write any more about politics but I cannot restrain myself.

I warned you that Obama, once elected, would govern as a hard, extreme leftist and many of you scoffed. I warned that his radicalism would get heavily implemented because of the perfect storm of his charisma, a liberal Congress, and the media that had become a spin doctor for his policies.

But even I wouldn't have expected that Obama would have so quickly done so much that, long-term, will hurt our country:

A $787 billion first-installment spending spree using your money, designed to make people (already strapped) to buy stuff on credit. He warns that more big rounds of government spending sprees using your money are coming.

Obama seems unaware of the negative consequences of his spending. For example, in extending unemployment checks to more than a year(!), every one of my career counseling clients who are unemployed say things like, 'Good, now I won't have to look for a job until a year from now."--the opposite of what's needed: putting more people to work. Thus, you and I are paying to encourage people to not look for work, just as welfare checks did.

A second phenomenally expensive set of bank bailouts, after the first (initiated by George Bush) has been a failure: the TARP assets have already lost half their value and banks have refused to say where the other TARP money has gone. Consensus is that another TRILLION-PLUS of your money will be spent to buy more bad assets. Why? So people and businesses can buy more on credit?! With few exceptions, we should not be buying more than we can afford to buy for cash. Corporations are figuring out how they can be redesignated as banks so they can join the bailout conga line and cash in on the bailout bonanza. And the Obama administration is even talking about nationalizing the banks. Karl Marx is smiling in his grave. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand are grimacing.

Calls for large increases in the amount of regulation. Do we never learn? From Prohibition to ERISA, HIPAA to Sarbanes-Oxley, attempts at heavy regulation have proven bizarrely expensive, metastasizing government programs have proven to be failures, certainly not cost-effective uses of your and my tax dollars. The SEC had 530 Bernie Madoffs, all ignored. The FDA knew about the Peanut Corp of America's salmonella-infested factory and never bothered to force the company to improve or get shut down.

It is impossible to police a nation's behavior. The wisest approach is to make greater efforts, cradle to grave, public and private, to educate people of the primacy of ethics: in parenting education, preschool through graduate school, and in public service messages (See this blog post for more on how to create an ethical America.) Prevention is our best chance; policing ethics can never work well enough to justify the cost.

Now Obama will spend many billions more of your money to bail out people who bought a more house than they could comfortably afford. What will that do? People who CAN afford to pay their mortgages will say they can't so they can cash in on the government handout--with you and I paying for it. Most ironic, that means that renters (who of course pay taxes) will be subsidizing overspending homeowners, including those who fabricate their need for a bailout.

The Bush administration gave billions of your money to the automakers to straighten themselves out. The Obama administration said, "Send us your improvement plans and if we like them, we'll give you many more billions. What have the car companies proposed? Trim a few models and lay off workers who had no cars to build anyway. That doesn't change the fact that American cars are the same inferior vehicles they long have been--Why do you think so many U.S. lawmakers drive Toyotas and Hondas, not Chevys and Fords. And even the vaunted savior, the electric Chevy Volt, will cost $40,000 versus a Toyota Prius' $22,000. Toyotas are known for reliability while American cars are known for breaking down (by design--A mechanic told me that U.S. car parts are made to last shorter than are Toyota parts.) Would YOU buy an American car? Do you think Obama's giving billions more of your money to implement the above plan will make the public buy a Chevy, Ford, or Chrysler over a Toyota or Honda? Would YOU, especially with U.S. carmakers on the brink of bankruptcy? Even if the government bailout did enable U.S. auto corporations to survive, is it worth taking your tax dollars to do so?

Of course, Obama has only just begun: To achieve his goal of doing all that spending while cutting the deficit, he'll take ever more of our money, borrow yet more (much from the Chinese) and print the rest (reducing the value of our savings) to reward the bad guys and punish the good. Next in line will be people who bought more on their credit cards than they could afford and illegal immigrants who will get an amnesty that will cost you and I many billions on a panoply of social programs. Obama will spend big on solar and wind, which because of physics limitations are likely to be no more than bit players in the effort to gain energy independence and become a nation that uses clean energy. He'll bail out (as always with our money) states and municipalities that spend beyond their means. His so-called "Dream Act" will mean that your children will have a worse chance of getting into public colleges, even the most prestigious, so that illegals can get admitted, usually with worse grades and test scores. and at in-state tuition. And I predict he will force us to use a socialized-medicine health care system that will mean that your hard work in being able to afford good health care will be punished so that unemployed people and illegals will get better health care.

Forty-seven percent of voters voted against Obama but he has broken his promise: He is not even close to governing using principles from both left and right of center. Consistent with his background that the media refused to focus on, Obama is, as I predicted, governing as a hard Leftist, so much more so than anyone could have conceived of as possible in a U.S. president. I do believe that Obama will turn America into a third-world nation, perhaps even before our children grow up.

28 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Alan Greenspan has said that some of the bank nationalization plans may have to be implemented.

Since we've already - under Bush, not Obama - put 7 trillion into the banks (3 in money, another 4 T in guarantees) the question is: is that money just a giveaway, or is it time for the US to try to get a return on its investment?

Is it really better to simply bail out the fiscal sector and walk away rather than demanding repayment? If we demand repayment, haven't we already nationalized the banks, since we'll be in charge of a big chunk of their fiscal policy, at least until such time as they can lobby the Congress to consider the money a gift and not a loan?

At least the Obama money is not all being spent in a single moribund sector of the economy as the Bush money was; it's also being publically debated.

In the world around me, Obama is the greatest thing since God himself. And, in my opinion, almost as realistic.

So many people say "Give him a chance" and are waiting to see how his first 100 days go. He's made a very clear impression in just one month on the job, and most people not only don't care, most are completely oblivious.

For those of us that are paying attention, we can scream all we want, but it won't matter. This administration will keep on doing what it wants, and by the time everybody else realizes it, they'll be gone.

You know how it's often said that adults forget what it's like to be kids? I think that high-level government officials have forgotten what it's like to be regular citizens. Would they do half the insane stuff they do now if they remembered?

I was born in Siberia in the former USSR. When I was 13 years old, my family moved to the U.S. That was in 1989. So I know what it's like to live in a socialist country.

Socialized medicine created a perfect black market: anyone who could afford to pay "under the table" did, just to get better care and faster service.

The government, forever inefficient, absolutely ignored basic supply and demand principles: people needed shoes, toothpaste, and underwear, which you couldn't find, but there was plenty of canned fish no one wanted to buy. So, the black market flourished here, too, with people being desperate for choices in goods.

We had a joke: "people are pretending to work and the government is pretending to pay". People had no incentives to perform well. The government kept printing money to pay for all of these under-performing workers. Until the whole thing collapsed. Then hyperinflation took over. People brought their paper money to banks in bags and threw it on the floor because it was worthless.

So, when I see what is happening to this country, I tell my friends that it scares the heck out of me to see the U.S. continuously moving in a socialist direction. And they laugh me off.

I don't understand how so many people can't think logically. This is simple stuff - you don't reward people and companies when they overspend and under-perform. You don't punish people and companies that don't overspend and under-perform by taxing them and taking away opportunities from them to gain market share from badly performing competitors who otherwise would be going out of business.

You don't take away incentives for companies to innovate, compete on price and service, and create more jobs.

Somehow when it comes to politics and economics, people tend to get so emotional and entirely illogical. Hence the ObamaMania.

And not many are screaming at the top of their lungs in opposition to the bailout, more government control, socialized medicine plans, more taxes, etc.

The Soviet Union was a perfect, real life example of where socialism can lead. I hope this never happens here. But people better wake up to what's going on and do something about it. The great thing about this country is that you can still speak up without being thrown into jail (or shipped off to Siberia).

As I've said in a previous comment, I am not a Bush fan. I would have not issued a dime of bailout to the banks. I don't believe in a credit-based economy and I don't believe in rewarding banks that deliberately made bad loans, knowing they'd be buried in a package.

The problem is that Obama is Bush squared in terms of bailing out every miscreant.

Thank you, Marty. And here is another logical conclusion that I read today:

"If increased government spending was really a stimulus, we ought to be in the middle of an unprecedented economic boom. George Bush presided over the most massive expansion of Federal Government spending since Lyndon Johnson."

My father traveled to the Soviet Union with a group from the New York Council of Churches. He brought back two model cars for my collection. I was a serious collector at the time. I remember taking one of the cars out of the box (gently) and holding it from its sides. What happened next won't surprise you: the wheels dropped out from under it.

Deficits matter a ton. And what matters as much is how one attempts to decrease it. Alas, as I wrote, he will largely do so not by cutting government spending but by increasing taxes, borrowing (heavily from the Chinese, which puts too much control of America in foreign hands), and by printing money, which reduces the value of all our (dwindling) savings.

How many states in the Union are poverty states? Half? Maybe New York and California should secede from the Union. Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas etc. -- so many of them are impoverished welfare states. I think New York would be better off as an independent country and member of the EEA (European Economic Area). No, I don't think the distance would be a problem. California could do the same, forging partnerships with international organizations like ASEAN and Mercosur. Both states would have their own strict immigration policies. New York would attract skilled European workers (British, Irish, Swiss, etc.) -- all under existing EEA laws (work permits). And I mean EEA and not European Union. There are very good reasons why Switzerland is not in the EU. California would do the same with Japan, South Korea and the other Asian Tigers. US citizens would not be able to take advantage of this because they would not be part of the EEA, however. Perhaps some minor amendments could be made.

Relations with the United States would be cordial. Trade would continue. Both states could actually lease out existing military bases and infrastructure to the United States Government. Defense would be the responsibility of the United Kingdom (through defense partnership).

In my opinion, the New England states, New York and New Jersey would be better off as a single and independent entity. The same goes for California. Half of the states in the Union drag everyone else down. New York and California are the most innovative, dynamic states, and they have the most sophisticated workforces. The populations would also be small enough to establish Direct Democracy, which could be based on the model used in Switzerland.

I think the time to get out is NOW. New Yorkers and Californians do not benefit by buttressing the welfare states. And in the coming years, more and more money will be siphoned from our pockets and poured into these agrarian wastelands. The USG has already proved it can't keep illegals out. Military commitments abroad, failure to tackle the drug trade, failure to control immigration, general federal incompetence, etc....it's not a difficult decision.

I'm not so sure California, at least, is in such great shape: $42 billion deficit and huge and growing structural problems in our economy, for example, the enormous number of limited-English-speaking, low-income, minimally educated immigrants.

Obamas talking down of the economy is killing my small contracting biz in Ridgewood,NJMt customers are afraid to go forward and spend money as planned and are canceling orders. I will be out of business soon as I have no revenue stream now.Peter

You mentioned "rewarding the bad guys and punishing the good." Here's an example:

http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=7244

This article in the Chronicle Of Philanthropy says that President Obama has made a proposal to impose new limits on charitable tax deductions for the wealthy, beginning in 2011. Some are concerned that this will cause a reduction in charitable gifts, while others say not to worry.

So people that make large donations to charities will get less of a tax deduction, and this may lead to less large donations in years to come. Sounds like a bad idea to me.

Charlemagne was the King of the Frankish people in the year 742 to 814. He ruled all of Western Europe from Northern Spain and the Roman Empire to Saxony and the Netherlands. Charlemagne was White and a Christian who believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. He was the "only" King that mandated Formal Education for all the people under his rule, and all the people under his rule had to attend school. In addition, he was the only King to create a nondenominational university called the Palace School. Because he mandated formal education... schools, universities, and "diversity of thought" flourished throughout Europe and into America. Charlemagne believed that government should be for the benefit of the people. He was a reformer who tried to improve his peoples lives. He set up the first legitimate economic monetary system!

So why didn't the "Nations of Color" like those in Africa, Middle East, China, South America, Mexico, and others become educated? Because the Religious and Political Leaders of those "Nations of Color" were not Christians... they were "ELITISTS"! They believed that "Knowledge" was not for the common man (you & me), but rather only for the "Elite" rulers and upper class. It was "these leaders" that were prejudice, unjust, and kept their own people in slavery. Even the slogan for the United Negro College Fund of 1972 reminds us that "Charlemagne" was right. That slogan was; "A mind is a terrible thing to waste".

Our Constitution was built on the bedrock of Christianity and the ideals of the Charlemagne era. In our time, it is not permitted to display the Ten Commandments on the steps of the Courthouse, yet it's okay to view pornography in the public library. Our morals are fading away. Our basic rights and freedoms that our Forefathers gave us are slowly being removed. If we continue on this course, the people of the United States will fall under the "Elitist" rule that was once the Doctrine of the "Nations of Color".

Now Obama wants to destroy all of this...

Why does Obama want to destroy the very principles that got him into office?

Response to Angelika Ilina. Finally, someone who has not been brainwashed by the political pundits (whether Democrat or Republican) who continually try to convince us that regulation is good as long as it comes from their party. America diverted course from its fee-market capitalist ways decades ago. Now there is no going back as the sheer amount of debts the government has created ensures that the government will never contract in any meaningful way because it must do more and more to try to service these debts. A vicious cycle that is now in the end game with the end result being either great inflation or a significant devaluing of the currency (which is comparable to inflation).

The only thing left to say is I like your style Angelika Ilina...if only I wasn't married!

The real problem in the US is that people no longer take a real interest in what is going on in Washington. Just look at the exit polls the vast majority of Obama voters could not identify who the vice president was, who the majority leader is and they thought the republicans were in total control of the house and senate. All they here is "change you can believe in" without looking any deeper into what the person saying really means. I bet that even now the majority of Obama supporters have no clue who the leaders of the county are and which party they belong too. Ask not what I can do for my country but what can my government leaders give me? If they promise enough I will vote for them, free healthcare, take over my house payments, cover my car warranty, pay my income for a year while I set at home. I do not care who pays for it or if I am stealing from my future children or grandchildren or even if China owns America I just want mine.

Now really. How do we get rid of this Obama Character? He has to go. It can't wait four years. With so many ignorant people it could be eight. I am so frustrated at peoples lack of common sense. WHy should I be I suppose, when people live above their means and see nothing wrong with it. I say it again. How can we really get this guy out of office and all of his partners in crime?

Anonymous, in this case, I agree with James Carville--this is the beginning of a 30-year liberal hegemony. The perfect storm of an unprecedentedly biased liberal media, an ever more leftward-leaning demographic (the poor and immigrants have the most babies), and a president and cabinet with the most sophisticated messaging team in history will mean we must learn to live with a hard Leftist country. And who knows, my Cassandran predictions could be dead wrong. I hope so.

I agree with Obama is killing our economy and all his spending, The Government run health care, Cap N Tax etc.. Unfortunately I'm grateful congress in its entirety has extended unemployment benefits both democrats & Republicans and obama is not the creditor to be recognized for this. I can't find a job and if it were not for the extensions i would be loosing my home. Not everyone out of work on Unemployment benefits is not waiting for this handout. Obama policies are really hindering employers from hiring trust me. Republicans & Independents know this too.

Americans could have seen this coming if they had turned off their reality tv,ipods and stayed away from StarBucks.The evidence was smacking us right in the face and we(not me)refused to take the blinders off and see the "man"for what he really was.Looking at his political activity in Chicago,knowing that he basically removed all competition during his campaign should have been a red flag.Maybe his alliance with the member(can't remember her name)of the US Communist Party should have awoken us.There was so much info on the guy and yet we still gave him a free pass,condemning anyone that dared question his real intentions.My grandmother always warned me "watch what you ask for,you might get it.I associate those words with the election of Obama,we wanted a "change" and a "change"is what we got.

I agree with most of these comments. The problem is that the Republican party is in disaray and Palin keeps messing things up by acroker ting like she is going to run and splitting the vote making the party weaker. I was a health insurance broker and due to Obama's heationlth reform I lost my job. Having a private system has graced us with some of the finest hospitals and medical schools in the world. If we continue to move in this direction we will loose what made us great. Thanks Obama.